Charles Walker from Romulus (hey i was just there this morning looking at a gorgeous house in Belleville), Michigan asked two important questions and here is the answer to both:

1. Is it possible to finance properties when your credit is not that strong and you have tons of credit card debt? And not so great income?

Yup! Go hard money for the first three deals! They donot, repeat donot care about credit card debt and your income level. And how about that I just got one of my student with 4 mortgage lates approved for hard money. By the way, the mortgage lates are from 2004. Not to suggest that you should start skipping your mortgage payment. That is never a good idea.

I think I wrote a detailed entry about hard money loans sometime ago. You can look in archives. But I dont, i will this weekend and post it here for everybody. Now obviously, I do REO's - bought, renovated and sold - so this advise does not hold true for if you are thinking about buying and holding for passive rental income.

2. Can somebody with a 645 FICO get a business line of credit from a bank?

Nope! they keep lifting the credit limit - it is around 720 Transunion right now. But here is the shortcut, why worry about what you cannot have and lets look what you might have a decent shot at getting - why are you getting this line of credit in the first place and what this LOC can do for you that a business credit cannot?

Cool thing about small business credit cards are that they dont report on personal credit. A very aggressive company that I have found pretty flexible in the past is Advanta in giving new, small businesses credit cards. Get one, use it once you start doing deals and build your credit limit up. Donot use it for your personal expenses and be very disciplined about it.

Home Depot and Lowes are another good sources that you will use in your real estate businesses. Get them now if you dont have them. They usually start you off with a small $1500 limit but after six months of usage (they will only give you in your personal name) you can transfer them in your corporation name.